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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278335">Trade This Life for Fortune and Fame</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/pseuds/partypaprika'>partypaprika</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Wilds (TV 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:21:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,079</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/pseuds/partypaprika</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When everything was over—all the arrests and publicity and funerals—all of it, Dot found herself in Los Angeles with a fat pile of money in her bank account.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dot Campbell/Fatin Jadmani</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Trade This Life for Fortune and Fame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherylbombshells/gifts">cherylbombshells</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When everything was over—all the arrests and publicity and funerals—all of it, Dot found herself in Los Angeles with a fat pile of money in her bank account. It would have been enough to pay for her dad’s drugs for thirty years. It was funny how she still thought of things in terms of her dad’s treatment—even after having survived what one of the therapists (real therapists) had referred to as “extreme trauma”, it still came back to that. Fucking hilarious.</p><p>Fatin had helped Dot find a lawyer who had negotiated Dot’s settlement. The lawyer had said that they could get an even larger payout if they’d gone to trial, like some of the other girls were doing, but they also risked the jury capping the losses due to the agreement that Dot’s father had signed with Dawn of Eve—apparently she’d still been a minor when he’d entered the agreement, so they might have found it binding or a mitigating factor or some shit like that.</p><p>Dot hadn’t really cared anyways—none of it was going to change what happened on the island or that her dad was still dead, so she’d told her lawyer to accept whatever settlement she thought was best.</p><p>“You should stay with me,” Fatin told Dot. Fatin’s Instagram had over five million followers and Fatin had signed a deal with some Hollywood agency. “William Morris,” Fatin corrected, like that meant anything to Dot.</p><p>“Whatever,” Dot said. Fatin had already found a place to live and was living the LA lifestyle, partying like it was going out of style.</p><p>“So, are you going to stay with me? Be my live-in muscle?” Fatin asked. She leaned in, a wild look in her eyes like she was already planning out all the trouble she wanted to bring home and have Dot sort out. “Dorothy, say yes.”</p><p>“It’s not like I have anything better to do,” Dot said, rolling her eyes.</p><p>“That’s not true at all. Although it’s in no way to my advantage, I feel like I have to point out that you could travel anywhere you want. Someone would probably give you your own survival show on Discovery or whatever. You could go live your best Bear Grylls lifestyle,” Fatin said. Dot was oddly touched.</p><p>“Maybe later,” Dot said after a minute. “Right now, I think I don’t want to do anything more challenging than look menacing at the lovesick idiots that you’re inevitably going to kick out first thing in the morning.”</p><p>“Dot, I would never,” Fatin said, mock offended. “First, we would have nice, relaxing morning sex. And then I would kick them out.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Fatin rented a house off of Melrose, which was apparently a trendy place in LA. She showed Dot to one of the guest rooms when Dot turned up with her meagre suitcase and gestured grandly like they were in a ballroom. “Mi casa es tu casa,” she said.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Dot said.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>That night, Fatin brought home some D-list celebrity guy at two in the morning. It wasn’t that Dot minded so much—Fatin had texted her a heads up—as it was unavoidably loud as they fucked or some semblance of it in the living room which was right next to Dot’s room.</p><p>Fatin was loud and throaty, her laugh echoing throughout the house, and Dot was vaguely jealous of it. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d laughed like that—and it certainly hadn’t been while doing anything remotely sexual.</p><p>Eventually Fatin and D-list moved into Fatin’s room and the sound was mercifully quieted, but Dot couldn’t get back to sleep. The bed was too soft and she kept half-dozing, jolting awake at the feeling of sand, only to realize that there was nothing but sheets below her.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the morning, only Fatin emerged sleepily from her room, yawning as she shuffled over and put some pancakes and eggs on her plate.</p><p>“No muscle needed?” Dot asked.</p><p>Fatin gave a small chuckle. “Not today. But I have high hopes for the next.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Despite Fatin’s claims that she wanted to be a well-fucked lady of leisure, her days seemed pretty packed. She was always having interviews and photoshoots or needing to go and take a photo of herself at some particular spot in LA for the sole purpose of putting it on her Instagram.</p><p>For the first few weeks or so, Dot didn’t do much. She listened to Fatin fuck her way through the hot guys of Los Angeles and didn’t sleep. She made food for herself and watched reality tv and went grocery shopping until she thought that she was going to out of her mind with boredom along with something itching under her skin that she couldn’t seem to identify.</p><p>When she saw the sign advertising hiring at the Trader Joe’s a few blocks away, Dot mentally shrugged and thought why the hell not. A week later, she was in their stupid employee outfit getting subjected to orientation.</p><p>“But why?” Fatin asked that night as they ate some chicken enchiladas that Dot had made. “I know it’s not because you need the money. If you’d blown it already on hookers and coke, A, I would be super jealous and, B, I would know.”</p><p>Dot shrugged. “What else should I be doing?”</p><p>Fatin looked horrified. “Anything! Nothing! What do you want to do?”</p><p>Dot wanted to rewind five years ago—when her dad was still healthy and they were a team. Before the island. Before everything. But she couldn’t rewind time anymore than she could have prevented her dad getting sick. And if she couldn’t rewind time, then getting Fatin out of it seemed like at least part way decent compensation.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The next day, Fatin was up before Dot, which was rare enough that Dot asked if Fatin had even slept. “Of course I slept,” Fatin said. “You think this much beauty comes without sleep?”</p><p>“Uh huh,” Dot said.</p><p>“So I have a proposal,” Fatin said, “that I think you might be kind of into.” For a moment, Dot though that Fatin’s proposal was going to involve kissing or dating and Dot’s face went red before Fatin continued. “So there’s a boxing studio down the road—I’ve always wanted to ‘put up my dukes’. Want to take lessons with me?”</p><p>“Oh, uh,” Dot said, floundering as she tried to change tracks. Why had she even thought that was what Fatin was going to ask. Fatin gave her a weird look and Dot cleared her throat forcefully. “Yeah, no, that sounds awesome. Sign me up.”</p><p>So then, three times a week, Dot and Fatin walked down to the boxing gym and took lessons from a short and squat man who seemed to take their collective ignorance about boxing personally. He was all about the tough love as a way of encouragement and it was exactly what Dot wanted from a boxing instructor.</p><p>That was nice—the boxing and Trader Joe’s and occasional breakfasts with Fatin the morning, just the two of them.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Most of the guys that Fatin brought back were pleasant enough. When Dot was unlucky enough to find herself in the same room as them, they made awkward small talk. “So, you were also with Fatin at the—you know,” one of them, a guy who looked like an Abercrombie &amp; Fitch model, asked.</p><p>“Yep,” Dot said, waiting for the coffee machine to finish the fuck up.</p><p>“That’s so crazy,” Abercrombie said.</p><p>“Yep.” Dot tried to ignore the prickly sense of anger and irritation coming up through her. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that she was feeling like a bitch for no reason.</p><p>“There you are,” Fatin said, coming and draping herself over Abercrombie. “Do you have time for another round?”</p><p>Abercrombie turned almost faster than light, sweeping Fatin up and carrying her as she giggled back to Fatin’s room. Guess he was up for another round, Dot thought to herself. It sounded bitter in her head and that just made Dot angrier, more irritated, and she wanted to punch something.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It came to a head when Fatin started bringing home women. The first one had dark hair cut in a bob and looked like she had popped out of a fashionable tv show. She dimpled at Dot when they met in the kitchen, introducing herself with some trendy name that Dot immediately forgot, and blew Fatin a kiss when she left.</p><p>“Branching out, I see,” Dot said and something in her voice made Fatin look at her oddly.</p><p>“Life is like a box of chocolates,” Fatin said, her face mock serious, before they both began laughing. “I will say that it was fun tasting that one,” she said salaciously. “I loved what I found inside.”</p><p>Suddenly, it was like a light had switched, and it went from all men to almost exclusively women. And just as suddenly and definitely completely unrelated, the grocery store job and the boxing lessons went from being enough—keeping Dot from feeling unmoored—to not.</p><p>What was she even doing in Los Angeles? She’d spent her whole life in Texas. Her dad was buried in Texas? Why the fuck was she dicking around in Los Angeles, working at a Trader Joe’s? She was here because Fatin felt sorry for her and she couldn’t figure out how to fucking get her life together.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The next night, Fatin brought home a woman in her mid-twenties, medium-tall height with an athletic build and dark hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. Dot started looking up plane tickets at 3 a.m.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I think that it might be time for me to head out to somewhere new,” Dot said in the morning, after Fatin’s latest conquest had left and it was just the two of them eating omelets.</p><p>Fatin stopped short, her fork halfway to her mouth. After a second, she closed her mouth and put her bite of omelet back on her plate. “What?” she said. “And I mean, what the fuck, Dorothy?”</p><p>“It’s just…” Dot tried to think about how to phrase the broiling, ugly thing underneath her. The need to fidget and move. To be somewhere that even if she knew that Fatin was hooking up with people that weren’t her, at least would be somewhere that she didn’t have to bear witness to it.</p><p>“It’s just what, Dot?” Fatin asked, her voice low but angry.</p><p>“Maybe it’s just time,” Dot said.</p><p>“That’s a bullshit reason,” Fatin said. “You think that I can’t handle it? What’s so horrible about living here?”</p><p>“Seeing your constant parade of one-night stands,” Dot said. “I can’t do it anymore.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sorry for having a libido,” Fatin said. “No, wait, I’m not going to apologize for liking sex. You don’t get to judge me—you refuse to come to parties where you could meet people. It’s like you want to be a celibate monk.”</p><p>“Or maybe, I just don’t like hooking up with people unless I want something more than just a one night fuck,” Dot said.</p><p>“You’re never going to find someone unless you get out there,” Fatin said. “If that means you need to leave here, fine, but we both know you’re going to go somewhere sad and boring like the Texas shithole that you grew up in and do nothing there.” Dot’s eyes’ narrowed. Enough was fucking enough.</p><p>“At least then I wouldn’t have to watch you sleep with half of the population of Los Angeles,” Dot said.</p><p>Fatin opened her mouth, outraged, and then stopped short, thought for a second and then squinted at Dot. “Are you angry because I’m sleeping with all those people or angry because I’m not sleeping with you?”</p><p>Dot looked down at the ground which apparently Fatin took as answer enough because there was a long, surprised silence.</p><p>“Well,” Fatin said eventually.</p><p>“Look, I’m sorry,” Dot said, gruffly.</p><p>“No, no,” Fatin said, her voice pleased and that was enough to get Dot to look up. “Dorothy, do not apologize.”</p><p>“But, I—” Dot said and then Fatin reached out to grab Dot’s wrist and Dot went quiet.</p><p>“If you’re telling me that I need to properly incentivize my live-in muscle, I think that I can get onboard with that,” Fatin said.</p><p>“I don’t want to make—you do—”</p><p>“Dot, please, shut up,” Fatin said and she leaned forward and cupped Dot’s cheek, drawing her forward into a kiss (a very, unsurprisingly, dirty kiss).</p>
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